


Kiss and Control

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blackrom, Dream Bubble, M/M, all the roms who are we kidding, redrom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:32:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>No.</i> you choke out, terrified.<br/>He smiles.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Yes.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He likes how you look in bruises.

There are some times he'll come by, all six and a half feet of him made of shadows and bitterness. When you feel the edge of your sanity and memory blur and stretch you know it's him- his dream bubble presses into yours like his fingers press into the bruises he's left, bites into your mind the way he bites into your neck. Because he can and he wants to. Because you don't have the will or the strength to fight it.

Because when you look into his eyes, you see the twin of your loneliness.   
You can't hate him. 

Your pity for him, for yourself, for everything that you and he have had to do, for the monsters you both had to become, and for the heartache no one but the two of you could ever understand whorls around inside of you, sloshing up against the glassy irises that betray your feelings to him.   
But he hates you with everything he has in him. You're barely a slip of a rival, barely more than a wriggler who had just begun to come into his own.

You're all built up of the good intentions that were ripped out of him so long ago. That makes him angry.

You're also built up of all his failures, and that makes him hate you.

But when you feel him sidle up against you, you don't move to defend yourself. His fist comes down hard and quick between your shoulder blades and you stagger before you fall onto the deck of his half mangled, half glorious ship. The beginnings of a massive bruise are brewing there, but he never gives you time to focus on it. Instead, the toe of a pointed, metal tipped boot collides with your solar plexus and flips you over, but not before it sends you skidding across the well-worn wooden deck. Breathless and sick, you look up at him.   
His lips curl into a vicious sneer, and all you can wonder is if you looked half as ugly when you did it.

That's before he sets his foot on top of your rib cage and growls low in his throat.

_You killed her._ he accuses, lips moving on reflex, the same way that you breathe even though you're dead.  
You don't bother defending yourself against his words any more than the next blow that lands squarely against your ribs.   
You register that there's a cracking noise. You've never broken a rib before, so you know that he's the one remembering for you, impressing the pain on you from his own memories. When you think of all the things he's done to you, all the pain he's made you feel, you shudder to wonder what are his memories and what are the fantasies his mind allows him in these dark and dank dream worlds.

He kicks you again, lips curling cruelly at the louder crunching noise it brings from your body.

You never knew it could hurt so much to breathe.

_You killed her, you worthless waste of genetic material._ He hisses, grinding his heel into your left ribcage. You cry out, feeling your gills rip and flare against the intrusive weight. You want to writhe, but you can't bring yourself to move against him and holy horrorterrors, this is what dying feels like. A battle is lost when you remember how Kanaya's chainsaw felt. You haven't had as much time as he has to learn how to use memories against others and what you get for your anguish is a gash on your belly that he takes delight in stomping on. 

Blood chokes you, thick and purple and just like his. It comes out thick through your nostrils and dribbles down the sides of your mouth. He bends at his half, picking you up by your hair.

_The pail I spilled you in had to be worth more than you are._

Your nose collides with the railing of the boat, splinters breaking off into the skin above your septum and you are drowning above water on your own blood. Dualscar lifts you back up, his long, thick, calloused fingers cupping your jaw with a grip that's sure to leave the kind of bruises he likes against your skin, deep and colourful and long lasting.

_You know that, don't you?_ He whispers, the claw of his thumb tracing along your bottom lip.   
The point of it rests on the cleft of your chin for a moment, his mouth against your ear fins.

_Well?_   
It's a hiss that's half torture and half divine mercy. His breath doesn't exist but you remember it hot, remember scorching pain against the delicate network of veins and cartilage and he laughs when you cringe, trying feebly to pull yourself away from the heat of it. Strong arms pull you back. He stands like a wall of stone behind you, all cold blood and hard muscles.

You nod, trying desperately not to cry out as the movement drags his lips across the membrane of your fin.

He smiles against it and pulls you closer.

Two things happen in tandem.   
The first is that you feel the bulge in his breeches press into your backside. He hisses against your ear and your muscles stiffen in an involuntary way, adrenaline demanding strife. An aggress, at least. But his hands tighten around your arms and he presses against you harder, and you don't have it in you to stop him from hurting you any more than you have it in you to stop _you_ from hurting you.  
He slams your abdomen against the railing of the ship, the splinters of your nose stinging with a horrible vengeance. 

You press back against him, your sobs and your blood drowning you as you swallow them.  
He doesn't like that very much.

With another horrid hiss, he bites down into your ear.

 

This time, you do scream.

 

His lips twist into a smile against your ear as the sound of it rings out into the void, into the absence of reality that wraps around the two of you.

You feel yourself being drug backwards and when he pulls away from you, you cringe at the loss of his body. But his hands are still on your arms like an iron vice, pulling you backwards so that your feet drag in front of you when your legs give out from the pain of his bite. It's never been like this before and you think maybe he really knows who you killed this time, maybe he's really angry enough to do something about it.

A traitorous part inside of you cries _please_.

Stumbling down the stairs as he carries you along, your vision starts to come back to you, if hazy. The belly of the ship feels warm and dry and not at all like it does in your memories, like sand and mould and dankness brought on by the mists of the sea. There's no worm eaten wood that peels away under the sharp heels of your shoes- just smooth, well shined wood that lets your blood pool up against its waxed surface instead of sinking down into it.

He drags you deeper and deeper and you lose track of how many rooms you go through. The ship you live in has only ever been a fragment, and you're not entirely sure you're uncomfortable with that revelation so much as the fact that you don't know where he's taking you. With all the trappings of velvet and gold and glass it looks all the more unfamiliar. You make out an astrolabe and you know that you're lost.

All too sudden you feel your feet go out from under you and you're hurtling towards a wall.

Your back makes a solid thudding sound as you collide with a corner, both shoulders being knocked inwards sharply by the angle of it. You're dazed when you slide down to the floor, but not dazed enough that you don't hear your ancestor chuckle with a timbre that's menacing and delighted. He's outlined by the dim, golden light that seeps in through the crack of the doorway, broad shoulders and solid legs and dangerous eyes moving towards you in a distinctly predatory way.  
His hand reaches out and you can't find it in yourself to pull away from those greedy claws.

They wrap around your throat and pull you upwards as he moves closer. You can feel his breath on your face and the tip of his nose on your cheek before you can even bring your eyes to meet his.  
That massive wellspring of pity you have for him erupts, flowing over and out of every pore you possess. His eyes widen before they narrow into tiny slits on his face, marring and crinkling his features as his hand tightens its grip on you. 

_Don't you dare think of pitying me, you insignificant speck of s-_

You spit in his face.

It's not because you hate him.

It's because he looks at you with those eyes full of hatred, with eyes that would be your eyes if you hadn't had your friends, if you hadn't been killed so early, if you had meant all those horrible things you said about wanting to murder the world above the ocean. They're full and empty, devoid of understanding or the concept of pity. When he looks into your eyes you can see the loneliness in his and it stabs you in so many more ways than he ever could with his own hands.

So you give him that.  
You spit at him to watch him feel justified when he wavers, to make sure he doesn't break under the torrent of red feelings you have for him.

Predictably, he takes it in like he's baking in the sun and you're the last slip of shade there ever was.   
His hands tighten back on your throat and he grinds against you, driving your abused back and shattered ribcage against the firm wood of the wall behind you. His free hand digs into your skin and pulls downward, bunching up bits of skin beneath them to leave trails of exposed muscle and blood. You want to hiss but his mouth is on yours, bruising your lips and clacking against your teeth. He bites into the flesh of your tongue and your gums both, claws tearing the top of your pants open.

When he moves the hand on your neck to bite down on your shoulder, you know that he's undoing his own trousers and you take that as a bitter sort of permission to let your feet settle on the floor in front of you.

Apparently, you take this the wrong way.

Because he snarls and hikes one of your legs up to his hip, the claws on his free hand digging into the gills above your broken ribs. You cry out in pain and shrink back, but he follows you, relishing the sounds of you screaming. The pain is so great that you don't process him turning your thigh outward until you feel something sizable press against your nook.   
No.

_No._ you choke out, terrified.  
He smiles.

_Yes._

Not all the broken bones or bruises or cuts or heart aches or choking or illnesses in the whole of the afterlife could compare to the pain that happens when he thrusts upward. You feel body tearing to accommodate the horror he calls a bulge, ripping open in the way you know it was never meant to. The blood that trickles down to the floor with a gentle _pip pip pap_ hardly even registers with you. You're too busy screaming so loudly that you can't remember if there was a sound before you started. 

You can't remember if there was a pain before this happened.

 

It doesn't get easier when he moves in and out of you, the tiny shocks of pleasure you feel only highlighting the pain all the worse. He groans against you contentedly, teeth sinking into your neck and upper arms every time he removes them to breathe. You're so tight that it's painful for him, too- the size of his bulge was never meant of the pubescent nook of a virgin. But he takes pleasure from this in the most horrible of ways and you want to hate him with everything you have but you can't.   
You can't because this sort of pleasure is the only kind he's ever known. The only kind he knows how to respond to and it makes you pity him so much the more.

It makes you red for him as he tears you to nothing but a husk of blood and tears. Your thighs cling to him as he hoists you against the wall, slamming you against it again and again with enough force that you can feel something in your back pop out of joint. 

Something in your abdomen tightens without your permission.  
When he picks up speed it quickens and pulses back, rebuffing the pain and intermingling with it.

For some reason unbeknownst to you, you push back against him.

He hisses loudly and brings his mouth back to yours, thrusting deeper and deeper until you feel your nook touch his pelvis and something horribly wrong happens when you start to see flashes of white.  
You think, maybe, you're dying all over again and in a different way, because there was only black when the chainsaw went through you.

Your eyes roll into the back of your head and you can't think anything at all.

Something fills you up completely and mixes with your blood, the gentle drops on the floorboards becoming a tiny but audible stream. You shudder and lay your aching head against the corner of the wall the way Dualscar rests his forehead against your chest. Everything is quiet and blissfully gentle for a moment.   
But as he gathers himself, he pulls away from you, and there is nothing but pain and emptiness again.

You hit the floor painfully, only able to watch him as he fixes his clothes into their proper place.

He looks at you oddly, opening his mouth to say something.  
Nothing comes from it and his lips slide shut, puffed up and glossy from your blood.

There's nothing but the sound of his footsteps as he walks away from you, the trappings of his dream bubble disappearing around you.  
You feel the pain and the walls dissolving around you as you watch after him, the need to cry out for him to stay overwhelming as you feel your consciousnesses separating.

As you sink into the ocean of your own dreamworld, as it fills with your blood, you hear a final remark.

_I'll be back._

You don't have enough left in you to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

He finds you when you're broken.

You've staved off this point for so long. You'd fought against depression and kicked against anger; you'd wrestled with anxiety and cut off the head of doubt and here you are. You're a little sliver of a boy in the sands of your memory, curled up tight as the sun and moon of your dream bubble measure time out for you in ways you're not even sure are real. You don't care.

You don't care about anything since he left you here.

His abuse was hard enough, fast enough, cruel enough for you to rebuff before. But every time you tried to dwell on what made you pity him, on the fact that he didn't understand the concept of mercy or pity, the heat of his mouth and that odd look in his eyes would come back to you.   
You strung yourself up and down, back and forth on these thoughts. Your emotions frayed and eventually snapped, the anchor holding you to sanity or caring about the mundane going with them. 

From time to time, someone will collide with you. 

They walk through your bubble in a daze, wondering where sands so white and a sun so cold ever came from.   
Sometimes, they stumble over you, shouting in shock before they stare at you with a heavy sort of horror. You imagined, at first, that maybe they took your odd stillness and the glaze in your eyes and the blood all around you to mean that you were some figment of the dreamworld of another. Most passed over you, looking back only to make certain you weren't following.

Once, you made out a reedy shape in yellow and a larger one the same colour. They said something that you didn't understand because you were so used to nothing but the sound of the ocean, and the sheer amount of hissing noises they emitted was enough to make you cover your ears.

The smaller one said something that sounded like your name and you turned your eyes towards him.

What followed was a series of choked, halting noises.   
The larger one lead the smaller away and you turned your head back in the sand, watching as they disappeared into the horizon.   
Something in you twisted, and you felt nothing any more.

So there was no reason not to lay in the sand, not to ignore the people who came by, who poked you and prodded you and sometimes came in groups or all alone. There was no reason to go into the sea or crawl out of it once you'd been thrown in by one of the passers-by. You just waited to wash back up, for the next one to find you. But you didn't care. All you heard was the roar of the ocean, all you felt was the breath in your lungs and the sun on your face. 

You don't know how long it has been like this when there is another shadow casting itself over you.

You don't turn to it, you just lay there. 

Your fingers curl and uncurl slowly, for reasons you have no idea of. Instead, your eyes fixate on the white sand next to them, in no particular direction.  
Breath comes in and out, just like always, and you wait for this traveller to pass on, too.

But they just stand there, silent and watching.

You breathe in and out, in and out. There is no feeling in your body nor any in your head. There are no emotions of curiosity or shame. There's nothing left for you to react to, not even this person.  
So you accept the numbness and rest your hands back on the bed of soft sand beneath you.

_What are you doing?_ The person asks and their voice is deep. Deep and bitter like red wine, and you think that it isn't so bad to subject yourself to this voice in particular. There's a shifting motion, a restless mumbling of everything about that figure and you feel the tip of a boot press against your ribs. It's a gingerly touch, almost as if they're afraid of you and if you had the option of laughing you might. The fangs of your life have been removed one by one and you don't know if you could get them back if you wanted to.

The figure growls lowly, frustrated.  
You remain unmoved. 

_Get UP._ It demands, shoving its foot a little too hard so that it rolls you over, the sand shifting noisily around your body.

When you don't respond, a pair of hands grab you. The fingers are warm and too familiar, calloused and thick. You almost try to think back, but a wave of apathy overtakes you and you can't find it in yourself to care. His eyes meet yours, purple and shiny as a beetle's carapace. They're narrow but they widen and they stay that way until he almost drops you, drawing his body away from yours.

All you're doing is breathing and staring at his arms, and you're prepared to fall back onto the ground and back into your routine of numbness. Instead, he sets you down with a gentleness that you're not really accustomed to. It jars you enough to move your facial muscles into some reasonable facsimile of a consternated frown. He sighs in what you think might be relief, but you're not all that used to thinking, so it's anyone's guess at this juncture.

_You're a mess._ he says. There's something bearing on the edge of absinthal in his voice, but he can't seem to force enough of it through to make it believable. Your feet find the ground and wobble from disuse, but he supports you with one hand and reaches towards your face with the other. 

All at once you pull back violently, upsetting your balance and his grasp and landing yourself flat on the beach beneath you.   
For no reason you can fathom, your heart pounds against your ribs and they ache dully, only exacerbating your panic. 

Your spindly fingers grasp at your ribs with one set and at your abdomen with the other.

There's something warm and wet in both those places and your eyes dance with flashes of white and splinters of pain.  
He takes a step nearer to you and you cry out.

_Eridan-_   
Is that your name? He's looking at you. He's coming closer, why does it _sting_ -  
 _Eridan-_  
Why is he so gentle now? You remember that voice and you remember those eyes and how they glint and how he hates you, why is his voice so _tender_ -  
 _Eridan-_  
Two hands are picking you up and you're going to scream, you're going to scream and scream until there's nothing left in the whole universe to scream with and _then_ -

He kisses you.

It's all soft lips and warm breath and it's something that you're frightened of.

You're frightened of the way your body goes so much weaker when he's holding your face in his hands and kissing you, how you feel your cheeks flush with purple when his thumbs stroke over them. You're so frightened by the fact that you feel anything at all, that there's something stirring to fill up the void. You want your numbness back and he won't let you have it. 

Instead, your mind floods with thoughts and memories and pain, _so much pain_. You're crying and hitting him, your chest rising and falling as you tear yourself away.

He looks up at you, startled.

_You left me._

It's something tiny and sad the first time you say it. He probably wouldn't have heard it if this were a regular beach and not only what you remember in your head. But you don't have the patience or the willpower to remember the sound of the waves lapping over each other, of the wind blowing in your hair. So your voice and his breathing is all there is and the sorrow in your voice is hard to mistake.  
He fumbles with his lips, trying to find words.  
It only brings more memories.

_You LEFT me!_

Howling is all you're doing right now. You want to rub your throat raw, hoping that the pain will drown everything out and you'll remember how to be numb again. You want him to hit you and forget about you and to stop _looking_ at you like that, with those eyes that are all full and half empty at the same time. You want him to hate you and then everything will be easy again, easy the way you understand it and the way you pitied him before.

But rather than hit you, he's drawing you back to him. He grips your wrists like they're made of ancient ivory and murmurs beautiful words to you in such a soft way.   
_I'm sorry._ he says, voice like the ocean on a hot summer's night, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry._

He draws you back and you let him, slowly feeling the fight drain out of you.   
_I didn't mean t' be gone for so long._

Your right hand is drawn up to his lips and he kisses it delicately, the scars that tear through his lips brushing over the soft flesh of your fingers.

It's not the kind of gesture you're used to.

The tenderness in it, the affection- they make your hand ache and you feel the need to pull away, but he's iron made, all scar tissue and musculature that you never got a chance to have. He pulls you close and holds you to his chest, stroking along the delta in your back, the span of soft skin between your shoulders that you faintly remember is supposed to be bruised. His fingertips only offer you smooth strokes instead of painful pressure.

You're not sure you can handle that.

But he's so certain, sure enough for the both of you and for the whole microcosm that you've created. He holds you close and kisses your jaw until you ache in every fibre of your being, his left hand cradling your right cheek when he presses against the left side of your neck to kiss the tiny, auxiliary gills that rest there. It's all careful, all slow. Either you're moving like molasses or he has some sort of strange effect on this world, a strange effect on the already strange passage of time.

Fingers from the hand on your face lift themselves and touch your ear fin. You almost jump out of your skin, you almost bolt for the ocean on whatever dregs of instinct you have left. But he pushes you gently into his arms and folds them around you when you tense. He lifts his lips to your other ear and rests there for a moment, eyelashes closing against your temple in the oddest, most pleasant sensation.

_I met her._

You wince when you don't mean to.

He doesn't have to say who he met, of course. You already know. You know as sure as there are- well, were- two moons in the sky, as sure as the game was rigged from the get go.   
There's nothing to do but wait for that maddening rush of heat to return to the shell of your ear.

A silence stretches between you.

You expect him to turn violent. You expect him to leave. You expect him to do everything but what he is doing, everything but stroking your hair and breathing in the scent of you. Absently, you wonder if he can really smell you, or if he's just remembering a smell that he loves. Does he care?  
Does it matter?

Suddenly he's pulling his head back, the pads of his thumbs caressing your cheekbones.   
Your eyes meet.  
Something inside you turns molten at the pity there.

_It's not your fault._ he says.

You feel something warm roll down your cheek.

Your legs give out beneath you, but instead of falling you just sink. You sink down and you let him kneel with you and hold you.   
There's absolutely nothing that you can do. Everything in you is broken now, and you have no option but to sit there and cry until you can't even imagine any more tears. It becomes too exhausting to do that, too exhausting to imagine the folds of his cape becoming wet with your saline.

It's his hand that rakes through your hair, his arms that contain you.   
Those are his shoulders you're crying on, his neck you're tugging at with weak hands.

It's his lips that you kiss and that you feel kiss you back.

The two of you rest in the sand together and you lay half on top of him, your mouths connected like it's the only way you remember how to breathe.  
To be fair to all parties involved, it may well be.

Your nails meet the skin of his scalp, his calloused palms meet your chest. Everything is hot and it shouldn't make sense- you're cold blooded and he's cold blooded but you're both so warm, so burningly warm and you try not to think about why, to think if maybe you never knew this sort of love while you were alive. You try not to think that you've never known real pity.

You try not to remember.

Together, your mouths make short work of that. Soon enough his lips are as abused as yours, sore and black-purple in a way that just makes you kiss him a little harder, a little longer. When he runs his hands over the gills on your ribs you moan into his mouth, your vision going hazy for just a second. You open your mouth to say something, but he starts toying with the inner edge of one and you arch against him, keening into his shoulder as a jolt runs through you.

He smiles and kisses you and your legs run together. Hips meet and you grind against each other slowly enough to make you both open your mouths against one another.   
Half lidded purple eyes stare back at you. 

They're full and you kiss him until his gills start flaring in a desperate search for oxygen.

\---

You find yourself in his cabin a few nights later, staring at the ceiling.

He shifts beside you, breath coming out thick and heavy from his sleep. A rough hand finds yours, wrapping it up in a way that would be hilarious if it weren't so intimate. You've got the same bones, the two of you, but yours is still small and thin, the muscles tiny and the skin only calloused on your trigger finger. 

You've taken to laying like this, on a pile of your old capes and cloaks. While neither of you are particularly good at sharing your feelings with anyone anymore, it's the closest either of you will ever get to being comforted in a pale way and you take it, laying with each other when you're too exhausted to remember sopor slime or how it works. 

It's sick, in it's own way, mixing red and pink together.

Then again, the two of you are sick. You're mutually ill together, both basking in the warmth of a compatriot who understands your unique malady.

_What're y' thinkin' about?_ he asks, pulling you to him. The corners of your mouth twitch. You decide on kissing his shoulder instead of mentioning how clingy he really is.   
Big, bad Orphaner Dualscar, broken down and red for a descendant that's less than half the troll he is.   
Less than half the troll he ever was.  
Orphaner Dualscar, who needs to be kissed and coddled every night and day, just the same, who can't take letting you wander too far before he's following after.

It's alright though.  
You think you really like clingy.

_I wish I'd had you, growing up._ you say, turning your head to look at him.   
His eyes are a little bleary with sleep in the way that makes your smile go a little bigger.

You reach up with your free hand and brush away a few curls of hair that are in his face. His expression softens and you feel him squeeze your other hand before pressing his cheek into the smooth palm the closer one. 

_Is now-_ he says, voice gruff and deep, _-where I tell you I wish the same?_  
 _No._ you reply softly, and he looks at you skeptically.

_Good._ Dualscar plays with the rings on your fingers, finding joy in twisting them around your thin knuckles and touching the smooth skin beneath where they sit. _Because that would be a little fuckin' selfish._

Your eyes meet his, one of your eyebrows quirking in a quizzical expression.  
For a change, he smiles and kisses your knuckles gently.

_After all, you have me for the rest a time._


End file.
